Russia joined in the UN condemnation of N. Korea. Russia disagreeing with the United States is hardly anything close to an alliance with N. Korea. The same is true of Russia gathering resources and leveraging loans from Venezuela.
Putin Starting to Wonder If His Puppets Are Smart Enough to Pull This Off By Andy Borowitz MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Russian President Vladimir Putin is “starting to get concerned” that the puppets he installed in the executive branch of the U.S. government “might not be up to the task at hand,” sources confirmed on Tuesday. According to the sources, the flameout of the national-security adviser Michael Flynn was only the most recent event that has caused Putin to wonder if the figureheads he propelled into office are “just too dim-witted” to serve the goals of the Russian Federation. “When you choose a puppet, you’re looking for a sweet spot,” one source close to Putin said. “You want to choose someone who’s dumb enough to be manipulated, but not so dumb that he can’t find the light switches.” “Increasingly, it looks like we missed that sweet spot,” the source said. Putin is reportedly willing to have a “wait and see” attitude with his current puppets, but, if things do not improve markedly, he will not hesitate to “make some changes,” the source said. “President Putin knew that this bunch didn’t have a lot of experience in government and that there were bound to be some growing pains,” the source said. “But, geez.”
Gee, for a campaign that didn't have any contact with Russians, they sure had a lot of contacts... Russia probe unearths attempted meeting between Trump campaign and Putin: report http://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...s-email-about-attempted-meeting-between-trump
Important news today is that there is over 10 hours of testimony from a member of Fusion GPS that compiled the Steele Dossier that might or might not get released in the next few days pending a vote with the committee. I don't anticipate the Dossier to be 100% verified if that testimony is made public, but that testimony will certainly contain backing of how they compiled this report without giving up sources I'm sure. This certainly could blow the lid off to say the least. 40,000 documents were also given from Fusion to the Senate as well. I'll be shocked if nothing is leaked from that group. I assume the Senate wouldn't even think about releasing this testimony if they thought it wasn't credible. We shall see but obviously we are in for more and more Russia news in the coming days.
Aw, are you worried about your tyrant/liar in chief? If he didn't do anything wrong, and if his campaign didn't do anything wrong, there's nothing for you to worry about, son. And, pro tip: if you don't like threads, don't visit them. Works well for me, but it took me a while to learn that.
I'm pretty sure the last thing Trump fans want is a new thread to be created every time an inevitable piece of news on Trump Russia breaks. At least with it consolidated in one spot you can just avoid one thread and live in blissful ignorance.
Trump wants some "nothing burgers" apparently... "It seems he is just always focused on Russia" Trump clashed with multiple GOP senators over Russia http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/23/trump-senate-yell-phone-calls-241950
Clearly, a man who has spent his entire life as a chief executive and who is accustomed to giving orders and who is not wont to build consensuses is the right person to lead this country's political system.
Breitbart, other 'alt-right' websites are the darlings of Russian propaganda effort Amid an investigation into Russian meddling in the last U.S. presidential election, a Russian propaganda Twitter network aimed at American audiences consistently spreads links to Breitbart and other right-wing or conspiracy theory websites that boost President Trump and bash Democrats. The websites — which include True Pundit, the Gateway Pundit and Imperialist U — are regular features on the list of “Top Domains” pushed by a network of 600 Twitter accounts followed by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, which tracks a Russian disinformation and propaganda campaign focused on U.S. voters. On Thursday, the most popular domains mentioned by the network in the previous 48 hours, according to the tracker, included True Pundit, the Russian government-controlled television network RT, the Gateway Pundit, Fox News, Russian government news agency Sputnik News and Breitbart. The network’s main role is to amplify messages deemed to benefit the Kremlin, but that doesn’t mean the websites' authors share the same goals, said Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which created the monitoring project for the fund. “Just being shared by Kremlin information operations does not mean they are part of the Kremlin’s disinformation operations,” Rosenberger said. “It just means something on these sites, or a lot of things on these sites, is either advancing a message the Kremlin is trying to push or that it is trying to discredit.” Alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign is the focus of an investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. The Gateway Pundit’s founder Jim Hoft called the project a “far-left smear site” of the Marshall Fund, a nonprofit group that promotes transatlantic cooperation. “It’s complete rubbish. ... The (fund) website’s real purpose is to smear websites supportive of Donald Trump and his accomplishments as Russian propaganda,” Hoft said in an email. “Of course, we have no connection to the Russians nor have we ever had any contact with any Russian officials.” Hoft did not deny that the Russians amplify his message, but asserted that the Russian government-controlled television network RT tends to cover more anti-American far-left stories and personalities than those about conservative Trump supporters. The Alliance for Securing Democracy’s advisory council includes “several #NeverTrumpers and far left hacks,” Hoft said. He listed President George W. Bush’s director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff; Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and former senior official in the George H.W. Bush administration; Michael Morell, former acting director of the CIA; former U.S. ambassador to Moscow Mike McFaul; Hillary Clinton’s senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan, and President Obama’s chief technology officer Nicole Wong. Others on the panel include the former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers of Michigan; Adm. Jim Stavridis, former commander of the U.S. European Command, and David Kramer, a senior fellow in the human rights and diplomacy program at Florida International University’s Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs. The websites carried a range of stories Wednesday that reflect themes promoted by the Russian network. Some examples: Breitbart: Run by Trump’s recently departed chief strategist Steve Bannon, it carried a story by the Associated Press about a "snub" of Trump's son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner by Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry after a cut in U.S. aid to Egypt over that country's ties with North Korea. Kushner, who is spearheading efforts to revive Mideast peace talks, later met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi but the AP story had not been updated on the Breitbart site. The Gateway Pundit: It ran stories with the headlines, "Alt-Left Protesters Show up to Phoenix Rally Armed with AR-15’s and Bullet Proof Vests,” and “Former Russian Amb Kislyak Slaps CNN in Ambush Interview: ‘You Should Be Ashamed.’” True Pundit: It carried a video with the headline, “‘A total eclipse of the facts’: Don Lemon Calls Trump ‘Unhinged’ In Wild Rant After Arizona Rally.” Thomas Paine, managing editor at True Pundit, did not deny playing a part in the Russian network’s information operation, but implied that mainstream media do the same. “We are flattered to be accused of participating in disinformation campaigns for government because as a start-up that's the exact time-tested model we have been emulating from the New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets," Paine wrote in an email. Anti-Imperialist U: A blogger who goes by the name Hugo Turner wrote on Sunday that neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists who participated in the Aug. 12 fracas in Charlottesville, Va., were among “hundreds of well-armed, highly trained fascist groups and militias, many interlocking with the military, police, FBI and the CIA.” Turner also called the popular revolt in Ukraine that ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 a “fascist coup” launched by the United States. Turner calls himself a novelist on Twitter, but is not listed by Amazon as publishing any books. James Carden, executive editor for the American Committee for East West Accord, which promotes better relations between the U.S. and Russia, assailed the Marshall Fund’s Twitter tracker an “assault on public discourse.” In an op-ed in The Nation, he said the fund, founded in 1972 by German Chancellor Willy Brandt to memorialize the U.S.-financed Marshall Plan that helped rebuild his nation after World War II, was “embracing the Russia panic that dominates the current discourse in Washington.” “It is a legitimate thing” to look at how the Russians try to influence American political discourse, Carden said in an interview. But Russian sites on the tracker also report on legitimate stories, he said. “It seems that anything critical of the United States is now all of a sudden Russian propaganda,” he said. “That’s a slippery slope.”
Russian Twitter bots get in on Charlottesville. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_t..._right_wing_information_on_twitter_after.html Guess which side they're on! Hint - it involves racist single male cosplay aficionados.
